>
> scientific american, back in 2004 I believe?, had a really great overview of
> the 5 reasons why criminologists think the crime rate decreased. I can't at
> all remember the details, but it would be really, really worth getting our
> hands on it because they look at each of the pet theories, where the theory
> excels and explains, where it fails, basically concluding that no one theory
> does the trick. There are five basic suspects:
...
> hhmm. now to decide if I want to blow 8 bucks on this, only to get one of
> those fooking images that will mean i will *still* have to transcribe the
> fookin thing.....
To save you the effort, here it is... I've only skimmed it. It looks like a useful summary but it doesn't reference anything which is really annoying if you want to look into any of the debates more.
the case of the Unsolved Crime Decline. By: Rosenfeld, Richard, Scientific American, 00368733, Feb2004, Vol. 290, Issue 2
Criminologists have not yet cracked the case, but they now know more about why U.S. crime rates plummeted in the 1990s--and how to help keep them down
For a short period during the closing decade of tile last century, U.S crime rates dropped precipitously. Homicide, burglary and robbery rates fell more than 40 percent, to levels not seen since the 1960s. The reduction in serious felonies per capita stunned criminologists, who have struggled to provide a satisfying explanation for such an unexpected and complex phenomenon. The research community has reached a consensus on the basic contours of the 1990s crime decline the who, what, when and where--but still argues about the why.
Today, as crime rates are again creeping upward, it seems appropriate to examine the evidence associated with the ! 990s drop and the theories put forth to account for it. Such an analysis could help society to better understand the causes underlying shifts in national crime statistics and may even be used to forestall future increases in serious offenses. In this article, I will weigh the relative merits of the leading explanations and present some suggestions for policies and experiments that could help prevent the next rise in criminal activity.
Exhibit A: The Facts
TO BETTER EVALUATE the various theories, it helps to take a closer look at the available data. The Federal Bureau of Investigation compiles and confirms cases of serious violent and property crimes reported to local police departments and then converts the tallies into averaged rates expressed as victims per 100,000 people. Of the crime categories the FBI tracks through its Uniform Crime Reporting program, homicide statistics are the most reliable because nearly all the cases are known to the police. The graph of crime levels from 1982 through 2001 [see box on opposite page] shows that the national homicide rate peaked at a high of 9.8 per 100,000 in 1991 and then fell to 5.5 by 2000--a 44 percent decline. The slump in the murder rate was accompanied by similar decreases in every major FBI crime category. The incidence of burglary (unlawful entry into a structure to commit a felony or theft) fell by 42 percent between 1991 and 2000; robbery (theft accompanied by force or the threat of force) dipped 47 percent.
The evidence depicting a drop in serious felonies in the 1990s is not limited to crimes compiled in the FBI reports, which may be affected by victims' willingness to notify police. Large contractions in burglary and robbery rates were also noted by the country's other major crime gauge, the National Crime Victimization Survey, which conducts annual polls of crime victims. This survey includes incidents that were not reported to police. Homicide victims cannot participate in polls, of course, but data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics from death certificates and coroner's reports match the homicide trends identified by the FBI.
Exhibit B: The Perpetrators
THE TRENDS are not uniform, however. According to demographic studies, the U.S. actually experienced two crime drops during the last two decades of the 20th century: one among adolescents and young adults (those under the age of 25) and the other among adults. Although the decrease in crime rates among youths has attracted more attention, the adult decline started sooner and lasted longer. Rates of homicide committed by adults have slid steadily since 1980. In contrast, youth homicide levels did not begin to fall until 1993 or 1994 and followed a dramatic increase that had originated about 10 years earlier. Robbery rates among adolescents and young adults traced the same trajectory, rising precipitously from the mid1980s until about 1994 and descending just as sharply thereafter.
The so-called youth violence epidemic, during both its escalation in the 1980s and its subsidence during the 1990s, Was itself highly concentrated in another population subset: young black men [see box on opposite page]. Changes in the crime rate for young women and whites were much less pronounced. Between 1984 and 1993, homicide offenses grew nearly fivefold among black male adolescents and more than doubled among black male young adults. The rates for both categories fell rapidly afterward. Meanwhile the offense rates among black male adults dropped by more than half; those for whites of any age have shown comparatively little change over the past 20 years.
Because people of Hispanic origin may be of any race, the FBI data for Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites and blacks cannot be broken out separately. The National Center for Health Statistics series on the causes of mortality, however, has permitted such a partitioning for homicide victims (not offenders) since 1990. Those data portray roughly the same pattern among young Hispanic males--a rise in homicide incidence until the early 1990s, followed by a decline through the end of the decade; however, the Hispanic rates were lower and their increase and subsequent decrease less severe than among young black men.
The nationally aggregated crime statistics obscure important differences in the timing and location of the youth violence epidemic as it arose in various areas around the country--valuable clues regarding the dimensions of the crime drop. The rise in youth homicide and robbery rates started in the largest cities during the early 1980s and then spread to smaller ones a few years later; violent crime rates also peaked and ebbed earlier in the biggest cities.
Exhibit Co The Weapons
A FINAL FACTOR to note was the proliferation of firearms possession among young minority males during the past two decades, reflected in the rising proportion of violent crimes committed with guns. Most homicides and a large proportion of robberies in the U.S. are perpetrated with firearms, whereas few burglars use guns. FBI statistics indicate that nearly all the growth in youth homicide rates (the crime for which weapon use is best documented) during the 1980s and early 1990s involved firearms--usually handguns. Killings in which other or no weapons were implicated actually decreased during the escalation phase of the youth homicide epidemic and continued to drop after 1993, when firearm-related homicide rates also started to fall.
Although it is clear that guns played a prominent role in the rise in homicides beginning in the mid-1980s, this does not necessarily imply that firearms "caused" the youth violence epidemic. The relation between guns and the decline in homicide is less clear, because both firearm- and nonfirearm-related killings abated during the 1990s. Two researchers who study violent acts, Philip J. Cook of Duke University and John H. Laub of the University of Maryland, have argued that the factors associated with the "way in" to the violence epidemic differ in some respects from those contributing to the "way Out." The decrease was steeper and broader than the increase' affecting crimes committed with and without guns. Keep that point in mind during the forthcoming evaluation of firearms' role in explaining the decrease in crime during the 1990s.
The Arguments
THE FACTS HAVE THUS led us to a set of unresolved questions that any credible explanation of the 1990s crime drop must accommodate: Why did the decline in youth violence arrive on the heels of a dramatic increase in youth violence? Why was the youth violence epidemic concentrated among young minority males? Why was the rise in youth violence--but not the fail--restricted to crimes involving firearms? Why did it start and end first in the big cities? And, not least, why has adult violence diminished over the past 20 years?
No theory accounts for all these facts, but certain hypotheses do a better job than others at explaining the many aspects of the crime decline. And some popularly held explications are plainly wrong.
Demographics. A few explanations of the crime drop can be eliminated simply because their timing is off. One such theory is based on the premise that crime rates will rise or fall in step with corresponding changes in the size of the age cohorts that are disproportionately responsible for crime. A greater proportion of adolescents and young adults take part in homicide and other crimes than adults. When the younger segment of the population shrinks, some researchers hypothesize, crime rates should as well, all else being equal. Unfortunately, all else is rarely equal. Other conditions affecting crime rates tend to change more rapidly, if less predictably, than the Size of the age group mainly involved in crime. Moreover, the relative size of the demographic group at highest risk, 14- to 24-yearold black males, changed little from 1993 (the peak of the youth-violence epidemic) to 2000 (the trough)--and actually decreased during the first stages of the epidemic.
Economists John J. Donohue III of Stanford University and Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago offer an intriguing alternative to conventional demographic explanations of the crime drop. They attribute as much as half of the crime decline during the 1990s to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s. This change resulted in fewer births of unwanted children to low-income women, thereby, they claim, preventing the crimes those disadvantaged children would have committed some 15 to 20 years later. Though not implausible, the analysis implies that youth homicide trends should have slackened earlier than they did.
Law enforcement. Policing efforts in a number of cities underwent revision during the 1990s, from the introduction of "community policing" strategies to blanket crackdowns on minor infractions. But many of these changes did not go into effect until well after the fall in crime had begun. It is true that local evidence supports the effectiveness of targeted "gun patrols" (in which police saturate areas that have a high incidence of firearm use) and of ensuring swift punishment of gang members who carry guns. Local evidence also backs computerized accountability programs, such as New York City's COMSTAT, that hold police commanders accountable for the crimes that occur in their districts. Yet sizable crime declines occurred in cities without such programs, too. No one can say whether changes in policing policies contributed to the decrease in national crime rates.
Kids, crack and guns. A more promising explanation for the decrease in crime has been offered by Carnegie Mellon University criminologist Alfred Blumstein, who links the phenomenon to shrinking demand for crack cocaine in the early 1990s, which presumably resulted in less violence related to the drug's sale. Unlike other theories, this one jibes both with the timing of the crime reductions and with that of the youth violence epidemic. The popularity of cheap crack cocaine created a boom in illicit drug trade during the 1980s. To meet growing demand, dealers recruited inner-city youths to sell crack and armed them with firearms for protection against thieves, unscrupulous buyers and rival sellers. The arms race soon moved beyond the neighborhood drug markets into surrounding communities, as gun violence engendered retaliation in kind.
For reasons that remain poorly understood, crack has shown itself to be a single-generation drug. As the original addicts grew older and either stopped taking it or died, younger drug users, who preferred marijuana, did not replace them. Thus, the demand for crack began to subside. Following a lag of a year or two, rates of gun violence also began to fall off, first in the largest cities where crack took hold earlier, then afterward in smaller cities where both crack and the youth violence epidemic arrived later.
Blumstein's crack/firearms diffusion explanation squares with most of the facts of the 1990s crime drop. It accounts for why the violence epidemic was ignited by males and minority youths who sold crack and why rates of nonfirearm related violence were not affected. (In general, drug sellers do not settle disputes with fists, clubs or knives.) Blumstein's theory is consistent with survey evidence showing that inner-city youths, including gang members, acquire guns mainly for protection. Additionally, it coincides with studies of the violence common to crack markets and the comparative lack thereof in the marijuana trade.
Economic expansion. Unfortunately, the crack/firearms diffusion hypothesis does not account for the length and breadth of the decrease in youth violence, and it says nothing about the drop in property crime rates or the long-term decline in violence among adults. It is tempting to invoke the economic boom of the 1990s, especially the steep declines in unemployment rates, to explain why both adults and youth might turn away from crime and toward legal and safer sources of income. Yet property crime and adult violence rates also dipped during the less favorable economic climate of the 1980s. The relation between unemployment and crime is in fact decidedly more complex than it first appears. The so-called opportunity effects of more and bigger paychecks, which make potential crime victims more attractive targets, may cancel out the crime-cutting effects of falling unemployment levels. On the other hand, unemployed people spend more time at home, resulting in fewer home burglaries.
In addition, job and income growth may have differing consequences regarding the occurrence of crime, depending on the availability of chances for illicit income. Although dealing drugs is dangerous and uncertain work, thousands of inner-city teenagers and young adults engage in it. Legitimate employment may be more attractive when those illegal moneymaking opportunities disappear, such as during the crash in the crack markets in the early 1990s. This situation implies that the growth of legal job availability has a greater effect on crime rates when and where drug markets have dried up because of lower demand or effective law enforcement efforts. To date, no published studies have examined this hypothesis.
Prison expansion. If the long-term decline in adult crime cannot be explained by improved economic conditions, perhaps it is associated with the corresponding escalation in incarceration rates during the past two decades. The U.S. incarcerates a larger proportion of its citizens than any other nation, and the size of the American prison population quadrupled between 1980 and 2000. It would be surprising if mass incarceration had no impact on crime, but like economic conditions, the ramifications of imprisonment are complex. Growth in imprisonment undoubtedly cuts crime in the short run; one study estimates that roughly a quarter of the drop in crime during the 1990s can be attributed to the sharp escalation in incarceration rates. Large-scale confinement, however, may boost crime rates in the long term by breaking up families, driving up unemployment rates, and otherwise depleting the social capital of those communities hardest hit by both crime and imprisonment.
The incarceration boom also may have contributed, albeit indirectly, to the youth homicide epidemic. As the demand for crack climbed during the 1980s and adult vendors increasingly sat behind bars, drug dealers turned to younger sellers. If such a labor shortage was created and all else held constant, sharper rises in youth homicide should have been observed in those areas with the greatest increases in adult imprisonment for drug crimes. This hypothesis merits further research.
Domestic violence and firearms policies. Two additional arguments have been offered for the decline in adult crime. The first links the drop in domestic homicide to the expansion of hotlines, shelters, judicial protection orders, and other domestic violence resources during the 1980s and 1990s. The second attributes lower incidence of adult victimization to the expansion of "concealed carry" laws, which permit adults to bear concealed weapons. Laura Dugan of the University of Maryland, Daniel Nagin of Carnegie Mellon and i conducted research that showed that domestic homicide rates fell more rapidly in cities with the greatest growth in legal advocacy and other services for victims of domestic abuse. We found, though, that other responses to domestic violence, such as a policy of mandatory arrest for offenders, may actually increase the likelihood of homicide under some conditions, presumably because offenders are angered by the legal intervention or because the resulting sanctions are not sufficient to protect victims from further violence.
Economist john R. Lott, jr., of the American Enterprise Institute has proposed that laws permitting the carrying of concealed weapons have reduced violent crime rates by making would-be offenders aware that potential victims could be armed. His research indicates that the rates of serious crime are lower in places with concealed-carry laws than elsewhere, controlling for other conditions affecting crime. Other scholars using similar data and methods, however, have not been able to reproduce Lott's results. For now, the case for "more guns, less crime" remains unproved.
Clearly, a single theory encompassing all the facts of the crime drop does not exist. The closest approximation of such an explanation is the link between the rise and fall in youth violence and corresponding shifts in the crack cocaine trade. The longer declines in adult violence and property crime are probably associated with the explosive growth in imprisonment, the adoption Of domestic violence policies and programs, and the economic boom of the 1990s--but mass incarceration, tougher arrest policies, more jobs and larger incomes may increase as well as reduce the occurrence of crime.
The Verdict
CONSIDERING the complexities of crime, what lessons can society draw to help anticipate and even head off another rise in criminal activity? Three guidelines seem appropriate.
Take apart the trends. As we have seen, the crime drop seems to have resulted from the confluence of two separate crime trends: one for adults and one for youths. Distinct explanations and policies apply to each of them. Adults are subject to incarceration in state and federal prisons, are legally entitled to possess firearms and are directly affected by efforts to stem domestic violence. Youths have a low risk of imprisonment and cannot legally possess a handgun if they are younger than 21 (or own a long gun until they are 18). Domestic and family violence policies do affect children and adolescents, but only indirectly, through their parents--and the consequences of such policies for youth crime may not show up for a number of years.
Young people did not participate equally in the violence epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was concentrated primarily among inner-city black and Hispanic males. Small-town and suburban white youths were involved in several highly publicized school shootings, but fortunately these events were not numerous enough to reverse the decline in youth firearm-related homicide. Policies and programs to prevent school shootings or reduce the already comparatively low level of violent crime among more affluent youths are likely to differ from those intended to suppress an arms race among inner-city youths. A wise strategy would be to tailor crime control policies to the particular circumstances Of different groups of victims and offenders.
Watch for accidental policy effects. Stiffer sentences for adult drug offenders may facilitate the criminal careers and shorten the lives of the youthful drug sellers who take their place. Mass incarceration reduces crime in the short run--but at great monetary and social costs--and may contribute to the chronically high levels of crime in those distressed communities from which prisoners are disproportionately drawn and to which they return. Some domestic violence policies may result in more, not less, violence and abuse. That is not to say society should close prisons or stop arrests. Instead communities should stay alert for the unexpected aftereffects that large-scale social interventions inevitably produce. Policymakers must understand the trade-offs between intended and unintended consequences and change policies if they are doing more harm than good. This lesson should be applied first to sentencing policies such as "three strikes and you're out" and mandatory minimum sentences, which have made the U.S. the world leader in incarceration.
Conduct experiments in crime-control policy. Public safety would benefit from a reversal of the standard sequence of implementing a crime-control policy or program first and then determining if it works. The National Institute of justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, has funded many field studies of domestic violence interventions, innovative policing practices, alternatives to prison for drug offenders, and greater penalties for gang members and other youths who carry guns. The term "experiment" must be used advisedly when referring to such research: for example, batterers cannot be assigned randomly to households, and legal barriers prevent the alteration of sentences for the most serious law violators. But threats to the validity of crime-control research can be lessened through the careful selection of comparison groups and the introduction of rigorous statistical controls. The point is to perform policy experimentation before implementing policies. Research findings alone will not prevent future increases in crime, but control policies that have been pretested stand a much better chance of succeeding.
Overview/The 1990s Crime Drop
• Serious violent and property crime rates--for homicide, burglary and robbery--in the U.S. decreased substantially during the 1990s. The rates for these serious offenses tumbled by more than 40 percent.
• Analysts have attributed the 1990s crime drop to various causes. These include changes in demographics, law-enforcement practices, economic conditions, incarceration rates, domestic violence and firearm policies, and the use of guns by young crack cocaine dealers.
• Society can draw three lessons from research on the crime decline that may help anticipate and even head off the next rise: divide crime trends into their components parts, look for unintended policy effects and engage in research-based policy experiments before new programs are implemented.
MORE TO EXPLORE
The Crime Drop in America. Edited by Alfred Blumstein and Joel Wallman. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
After the Epidemic: Recent Trends in Youth Violence in the United States. Philip J. Cook and John H. Laub in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Vol. 29. Edited by Michael Tonrg. University of Chicago Press, 2002.
The Crime Decline in Context. Richard Rosenfeld in Contexts, Vol. 1, No. 1, pages 25-34; Summer 2002.
Exposure Reduction or Retaliation? The Effects of Domestic Violence Resources on Intimate Partner Homicide. Laura Dugan, Daniel Nagin and Richard Rosenfeld in Low & Society Review, Vol. 3?, No. 1, pages 169-198; March 2003.
Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence. Jens Ludwig and Philip J. Cook. Brookings Institution, 2003.
Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey: www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict.htm#ncvs
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports: www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics: www.cdc.gov/nchc/nvss.htm
PHOTO (COLOR): HOMICIDE RATES per 100,00 Americans fell more than 40 percent during the 1990s.
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By Richard Rosenfeld, RICHARD ROSENFELD is professor in and chair of the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is co-author with Steven F. Messner of Crime and the American Dream, third edition (Wadsworth, 2001), and has published widely on the social sources of violent crime. Rosenfeld is a member of the National Academy of Sciences's Committee on Crime, Law and Justice and is on the steering committee of the National Consortium on Violence Research.
JUST THE FACTS
FOLLOWING A GENERAL DECLINE, the trend lines for homicide, burglary and robbery began to level off by the end of the 1990s and then rose slightly from 2000 to 2001. [Note that the national homicide tally for 2001 excludes the deaths resulting from the terrorist attacks of September Z 1.] Preliminary data for 2002 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting [UCRI program indicates that crime continued to drop in some cities, notably New York, While increasing in others, including Chicago and Los Angeles. A spot check of crime statistics for 10 large U.S. cities reveals similarly mixed results through the first quarter of 2003.
THE HOMICIDE RATE IN THE U.S. rose to a high of 9.8 per 100,000 people in 1991 and then dropped to 5.5 nine gears later--a 44 percent decrease, according to the FBI's UCR program.
The so-called youth violence epidemic'--the outbreak of serious crime incidents in urban areas that arose in the 1980s and then moderated during the 1990s--was perpetrated mainly by young black men [right graph]. Young women and whites were much less likely to participate in this phenomenon. These patterns are clearly documented by data from the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports, an extension of the UCR data. Between 1984 and 1993, homicide offenses grew nearly fivefold among black male adolescents ages 14 to 17] and more than doubled among black male young adults [ages 18 to 74]. People of races other than white and black make up only about 1 percent of homicide offenders and are not shown.]
THE BURGLARY RATE IN THE U.S. declined 42 percent in the 1990s. Unlike homicide and robbery rates, the lower incidence of burglaries was not limited to the closing decade of the 20th century. Burglary rates began to slip in the early 1980s and fell by more than half during the next 20 years.
The falls in the murder and burglary rates during the 1990s were accompanied by a similar decrease in the occurrence of robbery [a 4? percent drop], according to statistics compiled by the FBI from police reports.
GRAPH: U.S. HOMICIDE RATE 1982 to 2001
GRAPH: U.S. MALE HOMICIDE offending Rates by Race and Age, 1982-2000
GRAPH: U.S. BURGLARY RATE 1982 to 2001
GRAPH: U.S. ROBBERY RATE 1982 to 2001